Saturday, August 05, 2017

A church that doesn't require one to believe in so called "truths" without scientific evidence is good

I like the liberal church of my upbringing even though I don't currently work "church" into my schedule. I like not being required to believe in anything that doesn't have strong scientific evidence supporting it. I don't consider myself an atheist, however, as I still hold out some hope for things that may transcend this limited life.

Personally, I put ideas about what are called "super natural" things into a category of speculations, hopes and unknowns. Seems like most humans need these hopes for getting through this life. That need may come from our survival instincts, if nothing else, but that need is evident to me. No wonder religions remain popular tho their popularity is declining in the west. The alternative; a world of nothing that we think of as spirit, seems rather bleak.

There seems to always be plenty of room for speculations and these glimmers of hope as we haven't yet run out of new things to learn. I think of many ideas as being interesting speculations, rather than hard facts. That's where fundamentalist religions get into trouble. It's easy for people to fight over what they think are rigid facts; especially if there's no scientific way to verify those facts.

Ancient peoples would have thought of electricity as being magic. Now we are getting better at understanding electricity. Similar to learning more about electricity, something as fundamental as time, itself, is not understood. I like thinking about big questions like what is time? I like wondering about what causes the universe to exist and what causes our biological bodies to create self awareness. I still think there are a lot of truths that are beyond what we are currently able to conceptualize, given the way our minds have evolved. This gives me hope about some meaning beyond just our short lives, but hope and speculation is different than solid fact.

I'm also thinking about the concept of rigid fact versus ideas of Relativity Theory where things like the length of a yardstick become fluid. Then there's the weirdness of the quantum realm. That weirdness and fluidity is part of science also, not just imagination. My mind goes to many tangents.